Service vehicles have been used in the waste industry to collect waste from a receptacle (e.g., from a dumpster or a wheeled tote) and to transport the waste to a final disposition location. A conventional service vehicle includes forks or arms that extend forward, rearward, and/or to the side of a bed. The forks engage corresponding features (e.g., pockets or slots) formed in each receptacle, such that the receptacle can be lifted and dumped into the bed. In some embodiments, a hydraulic circuit is operatively connected to the forks, such that the forks and receptacle can be moved with reduced effort.
It can be important to gather information about the receptacle and/or the waste collected from the receptacle during servicing. For example, some service providers bill their customers based on an amount of waste (e.g., a weight of the waste) collected from each customer's receptacle. In another example, compliance with particular regulations (e.g., roadway regulations, emissions regulations, recycling regulations, hazardous waste regulations, etc.) requires that information be collected in association with waste discarded by particular customers and/or transported to particular final disposition locations. In these examples (and in other examples), the information is collected by way of one or more sensors mounted to the service vehicle. For example, a strain gauge could be mounted in the bed of the service vehicle or to a strut supporting the bed and used to measure a change in payload of the service vehicle due to service at a particular customer location. In another example, a pressure sensor could be associated with the hydraulic circuit that is connected to the forks of the vehicle and used to measure a change in hydraulic pressure associated with an engaged receptacle. In yet another example, the vehicle is driven over a set of scales that measure a combined weight of the service vehicle and collected waste.
Although the conventional sensors used to measure the waste collected by service vehicles may be appropriate for some applications, they can also be expensive, slow to respond, inaccurate, inconvenient, and/or mounted in exposed areas that make them prone to damage. The disclosed system is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above and/or other problems of the prior art.